This is an online resource for Dr. Robert Schmick's English 9 students in Team Thunder at Ellsworth High School, Ellsworth, Maine

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

A Reference for Dramatization

A Play Script Model

Act One----A Maine House in December

( Begin with everyone off stage. The main theme music plays and the action begins when the players walk on stage).

(The Smith family enters first and take their place at the right of the stage which is set up as the inside of their house)

(****The family stand side-by-side to the right of the stage facing the audience. When everyone is in position, the main theme music segues into “Silent Night”)

(At the end of the song, the players leave the stage)

(In the Smith house, Mrs. Smith is trying to calm his wife who is upset because she burned the holiday dinner, including the Christmas pudding)

Mrs. Smith: (exasperated)

Oh dear. It is absolutely burned to a crisp.

Mr. Smith: (consoling)

It’s okay dear. We can go to McDonald’s.

(The Smith children come rushing in)

and so on....

Note: ****in addition to charting the movements of your players in a storyboard; you can indicate position and movement in your script; this is to block your position and movement in a play rather than choreograph, a word which is exclusively used for dance and ballet---My bad!

(The stage is lit with both natural and artificial light. The natural light filtrates through some white gauze curtains. It is midday. The artificial light comes by way of some free standing lamps that are standing at stage right and stage left. A stage hand holds a large flashlight with a red vinyl gel over it that can cast an eerie red light. The stage hand is directed to move the light from each of the players faces throughout the performance)

We created a faux (fake) meat cleaver for our additional scene dramatization. The cleaver is to scale and constructed of molded duct tape and paper...and so on...
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From the Assyrian Empire of Ashurnazirpal II in Nimrud, Iraq, which can be seen at Bowdoin College

This stellae is from Nimrud, or Kalakh of yore, in what is now Iraq. This dates from the time of Ashurnazirpal II, and it can be seem at Bowdoin College here in Maine.

This is a genuine anorak (Aleut), as it is made from seal intestine making it entirely water resistant. I saw this at the very interesting and worth-a-visit Peary-Macmillan Polar Exploration Museum at Bowdoin College in New Brunswick, ME recently ( March, 2013).

This is the mummy that I mentioned that I witnessed being unearthed at the Ramesseum in Egypt, circa 1995 ( I lived in Egypt at an earlier period---1988 and worked as a teacher in Cairo. I saw this while on summer vacation from a teaching gig in Istanbul, Turkey. It spoke to me.